Why in news?

Union Minister Pralhad Joshi took additional charge of the Ministry of Education, succeeding Dharmendra Pradhan.

He inherits a wide range of structural education reforms initiated under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, many of which remain works-in-progress.

What’s in Today’s Article?

• Context: Pradhan's Tenure
• Foundational Literacy: Nipun Bharat
• Teacher Quality Initiatives
• The Three-Language Policy Controversy

Context: Pradhan's Tenure

• Dharmendra Pradhan's five-year tenure focused on ramping up implementation of NEP 2020, which the Union Cabinet had approved a year before he took charge.
• His education reforms shared common threads: performance evaluation and accountability, skilling-education convergence, promotion of a particular vision of "Indianness,".
• However, his ambitious goals were undercut by implementation gaps, and a push for uniformity that critics termed centralisation disregarding diversity.

Foundational Literacy: Nipun Bharat

• Launched to address pandemic-era learning losses, Nipun Bharat aims to ensure every child attains foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27 — a core NEP recommendation.
• Progress: ASER 2024 showed a 7-percentage-point gain in numeracy since 2018. PARAKH 2024 found Grade 3 students benefiting from the mission's first three years outperformed Grades 6 and 9 in language and math.
• Gaps remain: Fewer than a quarter of students nationally could read a Grade 2-level text, and Grade 5 reading levels remained roughly at pre-pandemic levels — signalling implementation shortfalls that may necessitate a "Nipun Bharat 2.0."

Teacher Quality Initiatives

• National Professional Standards for Teachers (NPST): India's first initiative to assess and classify teachers as proficient, expert, or advanced against uniform national standards, with career progression tied to this ladder. Not yet rolled out.
• National Mentoring Mission: Aims to identify mentor teachers to guide others up this ladder via online sessions. However, awareness among India's 1 crore teachers remains low, and impact assessments are yet to be formalised.
• Since NPST itself hasn't launched, teachers have little incentive to engage with mentoring sessions.

Higher Education Reforms

• Controversial UGC changes
  • The 2025 draft UGC regulations on appointing teachers, Vice-Chancellors, and staff faced strong opposition — particularly for giving governors a decisive say in Vice-Chancellor appointments and for removing the cap on contractual professorships.
  • New UGC undergraduate/postgraduate degree rules — built around flexibility and multi-disciplinarity — have been formally in force since the 2025 academic year.
  • However, institutions are still struggling with concepts like a commerce student studying science, or transferring credits via the National Credit Framework.
• Education-skilling convergence
  • Swayam Plus platform offers over 500 industry-developed courses across 15 sectors, including emerging technologies, with 6.5 lakh registrations.
  • New "AI for All" modules (AI for Physics, AI for Chemistry, AI in Accounting, AI for Educators, AI/ML using Python) have drawn 1 lakh registrations.
  • Key gaps: State university-affiliated colleges remain resistant to flexible credit systems, and there is minimal funding allocated to State universities to implement such flexibility.
  • The proposed Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, meant to replace the UGC, notably lacks a grant-giving function — a core UGC role.

The Three-Language Policy Controversy

• Pradhan pushed NEP adoption — particularly the three-language formula — by tying central funding for primary education schemes to state compliance.
• Tamil Nadu remains a holdout, though West Bengal's new government has accepted it.
• In CBSE schools, Pradhan mandated learning two Bharatiya languages from Classes 6 to 12, prioritising Indian languages over English.
• Some relief was granted to current students, but the government has held firm on this as the norm going forward — even though NEP itself, while championing Indian languages, simultaneously emphasises learning English and other foreign languages.

Conclusion

Pralhad Joshi takes charge of an education agenda rich in ambition but uneven in execution — from foundational literacy gains undercut by persistent learning gaps, to higher education reforms hampered by funding shortfalls, to a language policy facing continued federal pushback.

Carrying these reforms to genuine completion, rather than just headline announcements, will define the next chapter of India's education transformation.